University of Mississippi Medical Center will not purchase downtown Jackson's Landmark Center.

The discovery of about 2,000 graves on the medical center's campus was the primary cause, said medical center spokesman Jack Mazurak.

The school first discovered a few dozen graves on the property adjacent to Lakeland Drive in 2012. By February of this year, that number had reached 2,000. The cost of properly relocating and reinterring the caskets is $6 million, equaling the agreed-to purchase price of the Landmark.

Medical center officials have said the graves likely belong to patients of the old State Lunatic Asylum, which opened on campus in the 1850s.

"It's just not financially sound right now," Mazurak said. "Personally, it's a real disappointment. And, it's a disappointment to a lot of people at UMMC, especially (UMMC chancellor Dr. James Keeton), who's very fond of downtown and was very excited about adding jobs there."

The hospital planned to eventually move 1,000 mostly back-office jobs to the 330,00 square-foot Landmark. The building has been vacant since AT&T Mississippi left in 2012.

Downtown Jackson has 10 million square feet of office space, about 65 percent of which is occupied, Ben Allen, president and CEO of Downtown Jackson Partners, said late last year. A full Landmark, Allen said, would raise the occupancy rate to close to 70 percent.

"It's a freaking huge deal for us," Allen said then.

Negotiations between UMMC and the ownership consortium started last year. After the parties reached agreement on the purchase price, things hit a snag when one of the consortiums' members balked at some of the terms.

Keeton said in late January that it would not stop the medical center's purchase of the building.